GSU nursing program to be rebuilt from scratch
Grambling State University's undergraduate nursing program will have to be rebuilt from scratch, Janet Guyden, provost and vice president for academic affairs, said.
"For the last year, it's been such an integral part of Grambling State University's ethos, and it's been such an important part of who we are as an institution ... for those of us who work here every day, it's probably one of the hardest blows we've ever taken," Guyden said.
"We've got alum of that program working at the very highest levels of health care all over the world — military nurses, nurse practitioners, Ph.D.s in nursing, faculty in other schools. Our product is out there in ways that people locally don't even realize, and for them this has been a hard hit because it's the program that birthed them, and when you lose something like that, it takes a piece of your soul. It takes away a piece of your professional soul."
In August, the University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors approved a state of exigency for GSU’s defunct undergraduate nursing program through summer 2016. University President Willie Larkin made the request for a state of exigency, which gives the university the authority to terminate members of the nursing faculty who are no longer required without classes to teach.
Guyden said the state of exigency puts the program in stasis — no students are being enrolled and no plans area actively being worked on. The exigency, she said, must be resolved by the ULS Board before Grambling can start planning the new program.
The board should review the program at the end of this fiscal year, which terminates June 30. If all goes well, she said, the 2016-17 academic year could be used to plan the nursing program and 2017-18 would be the soonest that students could be enrolled.
"The blueprint and the architecture of that process is very detailed and very complex, and it has to be very well articulated and planned such that its success is pretty much right on. It's not for the faint of heart," Guyden said.
"This is about commitment to doing what Grambling has done in the past — put together well-articulated programs that meet the needs of the Louisiana marketplace, the marketplace of the workforce in the region, that will provide graduates that meet those needs. Grambling's been around for 114 years, and they've done a good job of that over time, and our commitment is to put together a cutting-edge, well-done program that produces graduates that meet that need."
The planning, she said, will have to look at the underlying philosophy of health care and define what the knowledge and skills needed will be, including critical thinking skills. The process also will offer an opportunity for the university to engage discussion with stakeholders, alumni and employers to really put together a cutting-edge program.
In June, the Louisiana State Board of Nursing withdrew conditional approval of Grambling’s undergraduate degree in nursing, which essentially closed the bachelor’s program, prohibiting Grambling from offering nursing classes or enrolling undergraduate students. The nursing program had struggled with maintaining exam pass rates since 2010.
Grambling’s master’s program in nursing was not affected by this decision. The nursing board also directed Grambling to create a transition plan for students to complete their studies at other institutions or transfer to another program at Grambling.
The nursing program worked with students since the nursing board’s decision in June to help them transfer to other programs so they can complete their studies. Thirty-five students graduated from Grambling over the summer after participating in a summer nursing course at Northwestern State University.
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In January, The News-Star reported the university’s undergraduate nursing program faced possible closure after three years being on the Board of Nursing’s “conditional approval” list for not maintaining an 80 percent passing rate by students taking the National Council Licensure Examination for the first time. The exam is required to get a nursing license, and students who passed on their second attempts taking test did not affect the program's statistics.
"A lot of those students have become effective practitioners," Guyden said.
In April, the the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing accredited GSU's School of Nursing through 2020.
This accreditation included both the undergraduate Bachelor of Science in Nursing and the graduate Master of Science in Nursing programs, including the Post Master’s Certificate.
Guyden said the ACEN accreditation took a holistic approach and looked at the whole School of Nursing while the Board of Nursing's decision was based on the undergraduate program's pass-fail rates on the NCLEX.
The program's staff, Guyden said, worked hard, but the program suffered from a high turnover rate at several leadership levels and lagged in realigning its curriculum to the NCLEX blueprint, which changes every three years.
The need to reinstate the program, Guyden said, is of particular importance because many first-generation college students are drawn to "helping" professional fields such as nursing or teaching, and the health care field "desperately needs" a diversity of providers.
"And as a university, we have to find a way to make the university whole again," Guyden said. "It's not just about nursing. It's about the university as a whole. ... It's one thing that makes people realize in very real ways that you can't take any program for granted. You can't just assume because we had it great and we did it right here that it's going to stay right. You've got to work at it every single day. ... The lessons we've learned from this have been hard."
Follow Bonnie Bolden on Twitter @Bonnie_Bolden_.
Scott Rogers also contributed to this report.